10 FALLING IN LOVE 



get an animated moral code instead of living men and 

 women. 



Look at the analogy of domestic animals. That is the 

 analogy to which breeding reformers always point with 

 special pride : but what does it really teach us ? That you 

 can't improve the efficiency of animals in any one point to 

 any high degree, without upsetting the general balance of 

 their constitution. The race-horse can run a mile on a 

 particular day at a particular place, bar accidents, with 

 wonderful speed : but that is about all he is good for. His 

 health as a whole is so surprisingly feeble that he has to 

 be treated with as much care as a delicate exotic. ' In 

 regard to animals and plants,' says Sir George Campbell, 

 ' we have very largely mastered the principles of heredity 

 and culture, and the modes by which good qualities may be 

 maximised, bad qualities minimised.' True, so far as con- 

 cerns a few points prized by ourselves for our own purposes. 

 But in doing this, we have so lowered the general constitu- 

 tional vigour of the plants or animals that our vines fall an 

 easy prey to oidium and phylloxera, our potatoes to the 

 potato disease and the Colorado beetle ; our sheep are 

 stupid, our rabbits idiotic, our domestic breeds generally 

 threatened with dangers to life and limb unknown to their 

 wiry ancestors in the wild state. And when one comes to 

 deal with the infinitely more complex individuality of man, 

 what hope would there be of our improving the breed by 

 deliberate selection ? If we developed the intellect, we 

 would probably stunt the physique or the moral nature ; if 

 we aimed at a general culture of all faculties alike, we would 

 probably end by a Chinese uniformity of mediocre dead 

 level. 



The balance of organs and faculties in a race is a very 

 delicate organic equilibrium. How delicate we now know 

 from thousands of examples, from the correlations of seem- 



